First observation

I was at the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators annual conference in NYC this past weekend, and when I tell you I haven't had a real moment to come up for air since then, due both to catching up on "real work" and starting the writing/publicizing/selling work I was energized to do by the conference, I am not kidding. I also slept very little during the weekend (head cold plus unfamiliar bed plus all the ideas running around in my head) so I have been doing my best to catch up with about 9 hours per night the last few nights.

I have a lot to say about the ideas from the conference.

The first one is, I think, the most profound one for me, and it has nothing to do with my own writing or the selling of my series. I realized something about my own didactic style with my kids, a place where I have been remiss:

I have been rushing them out of picture books. To their detriment.

As someone who is profoundly interested in my kids being conceptual and using their imaginations, as someone who is not particularly visual, as someone who adores the places a "real book" can take her...I have viewed my children's emergence from picture books toward "real books" with pleasure and triumph.

You know what? That was pretty dumb.

For one of the breakout sessions at the conference, I mistakenly got placed in an illustrator's seminar instead of a writer's seminar. Not wanting to make things difficult for the organizers (having been the right-hand man at conferences myself), I went to that seminar instead of trying to switch. What a fortunate mistake! I got to see up-close-and-personal the life of an art director making decisions about how to match the text of an author with the art of an illustrator in her portfolio. And I saw how truly, deeply, these people care about art, about having text come to life through art, about how the art is not somehow a second-class citizen beside the words. I realized how quickly I have turned the pages in my kids' picture books: Just as soon as I stopped reading the text, I flipped the page. Did I ever give them time really to absorb the pictures? Did I ever really absorb the pictures? No, to both questions. Often, Ella would point out some visual detail of a book that I had read dozens of times, and it would startle me.

So, this week, it's picture book week here at Mariposario. Today and tomorrow, most regular lessons are suspended so that we can make our way through the art in our picture books and really see it. For me, it will be as if for the first time. I bet Ella will be able to tell me a lot.